


someone who's lost like you

by addandsubtract



Series: seams and scars [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 09:24:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12838200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addandsubtract/pseuds/addandsubtract
Summary: When he went back to college in the fall, Steve had said, “Hey, swing by anytime you’re in town. My door’s always open,” but Mike hadn’t planned on actually taking him up on it.





	someone who's lost like you

**Author's Note:**

> just thinking about steve harrington having a thing for the wheelers, and how much that would please me, so here's a little something. i've seen a couple of headcanons about steve joining the police force, which i love, so i hope no one minds that i borrowed it.

Mike leaves his bike on Steve’s front lawn. It’s after midnight, and he’s a little tipsy from spending the evening with El and Hop. When he went back to college in the fall, Steve had said, “Hey, swing by anytime you’re in town. My door’s always open,” but Mike hadn’t planned on actually taking him up on it.

Summer was one thing, but continuing into the winter was something else. He’s only home for a week, and he’s supposed to be spending time with his family. He wishes ‘family’ meant Nance and Holly and El, not everything – everyone – else.

Steve lives in his parents’ old house, though they left Hawkins once the weirdness got weirder. Steve stayed, and the house was paid off, so once he officially made the force it was cheaper just to stay. Nance avoids it, but Mike never had a real reason to.

He knocks. Steve answers.

“You know, I could write you up for operating a vehicle while under the influence,” Steve says, grin crooked. “I saw that drunken tilting.”

Mike squints at him. “A bicycle counts as a vehicle?”

“Sure, why not?” Steve says. “It has wheels.”

Mike rolls his eyes. “Got a cigarette?”

Steve laughs and steps back from the doorway. “Come inside, I have something better.”

Mike takes his shoes off at the door, like he's been trained to. Steve’s parents put a Jacuzzi in the master bathroom, and Steve’s turned the jets on. Mike sits on the edge, dangling his feet in the heated water, while Steve produces a joint from his bedside table.

“Isn’t that illegal?” Mike asks, like he’s never gotten high before. “Aren’t you supposed to uphold the law?”

Steve shrugs, easy as anything, his hair flopping into his face. Hop keeps telling him he’s got to cut it, loudly and in public - it’s one of their things. Mike swung by a couple of time over the course of the summer, ostensibly to find El, and witnessed the rant in person. “Don’t be such a square, Wheeler.”

“I don’t think anyone says ‘square’ anymore, Steve.” Mike watches Steve light the joint and stick it in his mouth, swinging his legs over the side of the Jacuzzi. He perches next to Mike, and Mike realizes that he’s a little taller than Steve now. He’s still skinnier – Steve spends a lot more time wrestling perps to the ground, or whatever, and less time studying for midterms. Mike is gangly on his best days.

Mike expected this to feel a little weird, and it does, even when he takes the joint from Steve and inhales. They’re not exactly friends, though they’ve buried monsters together, protected each other from danger. They’ve spent grueling nights hunkered down in the woods waiting for morning. It’s something they all share, but Steve also has the dubious honor of being the only guy Mike knows in Hawkins that kisses other guys, sometimes.

Not all the time, not like Mike. But sometimes.

Mike hands the joint back, and pushes his feet through the water, wriggling his toes. His jeans are rolled up to mid-calf and he doesn’t want to get them wet. He feels good. It’s nice to be quiet here. His parents expect him to stay over at El’s tonight, and El can find him if she needs to. He’s not lying, exactly, though he wouldn’t feel bad if he was. His parents have lied about worse.

“Y’know, I thought the pot might make you chattier,” Steve says. Mike glances over at him, and he’s smiling, looking down at Mike’s feet. Mike thought about him, sometimes, when he knew Steve was climbing into Nance’s window, and after, once they’d broken up. It should have been some kind of clue, but it wasn’t.

“What did you wanna talk about?”

“I don’t know. How goes the gross science?” Steve leans in, nudging Mike with his shoulder. He should know by now that he doesn’t have to flirt with Mike, but he still does. Maybe he likes it.

“No interdimensional monsters yet, so pretty normal,” Mike says. “I can tell you all about the dissections if you want.”

Steve shudders, theatrical. “Nah, I’m good. We have enough of that to go around.”

El had said as much. They haven’t entirely stopped the Upside Down from pushing against the barriers she’s put up, and sometimes things escape. Just because most of the crew has left, that doesn’t make Hawkins any less Hawkins. Mike feels a pang of guilt for leaving, but – what should he have done? Stayed in Indiana forever? None of them minded when Max took Lucas back to California with her. Plus it seemed better to leave, and maybe come back with skills none of them had the first time around. Maybe stop the Upside Down forever, or help El do it.

Steve hands the joint back, and lets Mike suck in another toke before he pulls up his shirt, saying, “Oh, related, wanna see my new scar? It’s healing up pretty nicely.”

It’s a curved line that starts underneath his right pec and ends just to the left of his bellybutton, still pink with new skin, healing. Mike reaches out to touch it before he can think about holding back, tracing the length of it with his fingers. Steve shudders.

“Jesus,” Mike says.

“Yeah, any deeper and my guts would’ve probably been all over the place,” Steve says, nonchalant. “Though El could’ve held them in with her thing, if she had to. You’ll know how to stitch someone up when you get back, right?” He says it easy, like Mike is going to get into medical school, no problem, and then he’ll come back and fix them up when the monsters hurt them too much. Maybe he has that kind of faith in Mike. Nance says he’s always been easy for the Wheelers.

“You’re pretty stupid, you know that?” Mike says, and then kisses him. It’s different from June, when Steve picked Mike up in his cruiser and looked at him for too long, like he was trying to decide if this was a good idea. When he’d kissed Mike hard enough that his head hit the window with a dull _thunk_ , and Mike had thought, _I wonder if he thinks I look like my sister_. It’s different than August, when they’d been hooking up for months and hadn’t talked about it, and Mike fell asleep in Steve’s bed. The summer was too hot for more than a thin sheet pulled up over his thighs, and Steve woke him up around midday when he stopped home for lunch, his hands in Mike’s hair. A surprising series of tender moments.

It’s different, because they’ve been apart for four months, and there’s a desperation in it that Mike wasn’t expecting. Mike can feel the way the pot makes him pliable, how he opens his mouth and lets Steve kiss him. How Steve curls his hand into Mike’s shirt and hauls him closer, both of them wobbling a little on the edge of the Jacuzzi. He didn’t think they’d be doing this again. Summer was one thing, but now there’s snow outside, and Mike’s only in town until Sunday. It seems reckless.

“I should’ve known that a freak like you would get off on scars,” Steve says, grinning, and Mike rolls his eyes.

“Do you ever shut up?” he asks, even though he knows the answer.

Steve snorts. He says, “No?” and then he kisses Mike again.

Mike wants to ask, _did you think about me while I was gone?_ but that’s stupid. He isn’t naïve. He’s met guys at college, gone to a few New York City bars, where he can easily turn on his Midwestern charm, lure men in with a wide-eyed look. He knows that in a town as small as Hawkins, a town where everyone knows everyone else, it’s easier for Steve to date women, and that’s fine. Steve likes women, mostly.

Still, he’s here again. It would feel unhealthy if Steve wasn’t genuinely such a good guy. He wonders if Steve feels left behind, but there are some days where it’s clear that he knows things about El that Mike never will, that he and Dustin are just about brothers. Jonathan trusts him to keep Will safe, while he’s off in Arizona with Nance, working up to the big story they won't talk much about.

Mike didn’t think to tell Steve to be careful while he was gone. Maybe he should have.

“You’re still thinking too much,” Steve says, pushed up against Mike’s mouth.

“That’s just how Wheelers are,” Mike says, and Steve laughs, a fond huff.

They’re a doorway and twenty feet from Steve’s bed. Mike’s more than familiar with it. He lets Steve pull him out of the Jacuzzi and into the bedroom, wet feet slipping against the tile, and then leaving damp prints in the carpet. Steve tugs his shirt off, and then Mike’s sweater. He’s not wearing an undershirt, and Steve laughs again, nudging him back onto the bed.

“Are you going to see Nance before she leaves?” Mike asks. “You know she wants to.”

Steve grimaces. “You’re asking that now?”

Mike shrugs. “Why not?” Mostly he likes looking at what Steve’s face does when he mentions his sister, like he’s both fond and exasperated. Mike thinks Steve is probably still a little in love with her, and he’s mostly okay with it, but he likes pushing. He’s a scientist - he’s going to be a scientist, anyway - he likes to figure things out.

Steve rolls his eyes. “You’re a piece of work, Wheeler.” He pulls Mike’s jeans and underwear off at the same time, leaving him naked. Mike mostly wants to blow Steve, so he waits for Steve to get his sweats off, and tugs him down at the wrist, rolling them over. Steve’s hair is everywhere, but Mike’s is getting out of hand, too. It’s almost as long as Nance’s was, when she first cut it. It’s wavy, and over the summer Steve liked to tug on it, wrap it between his fingers. Mike kisses Steve’s red mouth again, then his neck, his chest. He licks over the new scar, listening for how Steve’s breath shudders. Steve’s mostly hard, and Mike laughs, curling one hand around him.

“Been awhile?” he asks.

“Oh, you know,” Steve says, rolling his eyes. “Just about four months.”

Mike blinks, because Steve might as well have said that he hasn’t had sex since the night before Mike left for school, when he’d snuck out through his bedroom window and biked to Steve’s. Steve had laughed at Mike’s cutoff shorts, and sucked him off on the couch.

Mike isn’t going to think about it. He ducks down to slide the head of Steve’s dick into his mouth. Steve makes a strangled noise and curls his fingers into Mike’s hair, pulling. Mike groans, and Steve’s hips move, and it’s good. It’s good.

Mike’s had a crush on Steve since he was twelve. It was always gonna be good.

Mike bobs his head, and Steve gasps, laughs, says, “Damn, they’re teaching you all the right stuff at that fancy school.” He likes to talk, which is fine, because Mike’s gotten to like it, too.

It doesn’t take that long, but it’s enough for Mike to feel the strain in his jaw when Steve comes. After, Steve pushes Mike onto his back and wraps a hand around him, kissing Mike while he jerks him off, not even caring that Mike’s mouth tastes like semen.

“Hey,” Steve says, thumb swiping over the slit of Mike’s dick, making his hips twitch. “You’re all red. Gonna come?”

“Sure,” Mike says, going for blasé and missing the hell out of it, back arching as he comes in Steve’s fist, splattering his stomach and thighs.

Steve flattens him to the mattress after, kissing and kissing him, until the weight is too much. Mike protests, and pushes at Steve’s shoulder until he rolls off. After a few moments, Steve hauls himself up, grabbing a washcloth and retrieving the joint they left on the lip of the Jacuzzi. He relights it and hands it to Mike, before cleaning them both up as best he can.

“Y’know, I wasn’t sure you were gonna come back,” Steve says. He has that crooked grin on. Mike still doesn’t really know why Steve even wants him here.

“Me neither,” Mike says. He runs his finger over Steve’s new scar again, and Steve hisses, reaches out and takes the joint back. “I’m not complaining, though.”

“We’ve got a slight monster problem in Hawkins, but there are a few good things around here too,” Steve says, and exhales three perfect smoke rings.

Tomorrow Mike is going to have to deal with his family. It’s nice to have a few places to go when his parents’ pretences get to be too much. El and Steve, keeping the weirdness at bay. “Can I sleep here tonight?” he asks.

“Of course,” Steve says, and he punches Mike in the shoulder like they’re friends. “Though I hope you don’t mind that I’m a cuddler.”

Mike knows. He says, “I don’t mind.”


End file.
